[00:00:00] Welcome to the Abundant Coach. I’m your host, Lauren Brollier Newton. This is a weekly podcast about creating full spectrum success with a thriving coaching business while making a profound difference in the world. Each week you’ll discover insights, strategies, and inspiration to help you attract your ideal clients, facilitate real transformation in their lives, and grow your coaching business while living your purpose with true freedom and fulfillment.

Lauren Brollier Newton: Well, welcome back to the Abundant Coach. Hey, hello, wherever you are in the world. I know many of you are coaches looking to expand your business. Some of you are thinking about becoming coaches, and I actually think this is going to be a great episode for you because it’s going to give you some context, help you make a decision for yourself.

And a lot of coaches on here where you’re very niche specific, you are coaching business people, or you are coaching real estate agents, or you’re coaching sales people. And I think these questions are going to add a next level to your business. So welcome on in [00:01:00] this episode is all about 10 powerful coaching questions for life changing client results.

I don’t know why this came to my mind as I was getting ready to record this episode here right now, but I just thought it has nothing to do with the episode early, but I just thought I’d tell you a funny story. I mean, I guess it does because this client asked a, Not so powerful question, but one time I was doing an event.

It was free. So I did a workshop. It was free I can’t remember if it was a full day or a half day or three hour or whatever it was But this prospective client she was not a client of mine, but prospective client or prospect Received a free ticket. And so like a week after the event, she sends me an email and she’s like, Hey, can I get a refund?

I mean, I guess you could say, it’s a good question. I mean, Hey, looking for money or whatever. But every time I think about that, I laugh because the ticket was free. So like I wrote her back and I’m like, It was free ticket, so I can’t give you a refund, but like, God bless. So I don’t know what made me think of that.

It’s just, sometimes you have to laugh at the things that happen as you’re growing a business as an entrepreneur, because as you know, it can be very up and down and you just kind of have to laugh at the things that happen, [00:02:00] but good for her for asking the question. So speaking of questions today is about 10 powerful coaching questions so that your client has life changing results.

And so I want to start with a quote as I always do. And this quote is from Mary Morrissey. She says, the quality of your life. Is determined by the quality of the questions you ask. So let me break that down. I think it’s very important for us to first understand the power. of knowing how to form a question that’s actually going to transform your client’s results.

But let’s start in our own life. I can ask myself, why is life so hard? And if I ask the question, why is life so hard? I am going to get all answers on the vibration of why is life so hard? Because people are cruel because blah, blah, blah, because this happened in my childhood. So you’re going to get an answer at the frequency you ask the question.

Okay. So another example of a question that’s maybe not the most expansive of questions you can ask is, what can I do to just. Pay my bills and not run out of money by the end of the month. And the answers you get on the frequency of pay my bills, not run out of money. [00:03:00] Now it doesn’t mean you’re not going to get answers to those questions.

Those answers to the questions that we’re not going to transform the quality of your life and the patterns that you’re running same for your clients. So Mary Morrissey, who’s the founder of brave thinking Institute, she’s been studying transformation for 50 years, freaking brilliant. She likes to tell it this way.

If you ask the question, what can I do to just pay my bills and not run out of money by the end of this month? You’ll get answers on that frequency. As I just mentioned, she says, what if you ask this question instead? What can I do to travel to the South of France and make 10, 000 while I do it? You’re going to get very different answers to that question, because now you’re on the vibration of generating income, traveling where you love.

And the answers are going to be much different than just pay my bill questions. So Mary will often like to say, if you go to the internet with a question, a search engine like Google. And you just type in the word movie, you’re going to get the history of movies. You’ll probably get movies that are out right now.

You’ll probably get the definition of what a movie is. It’s going to be like all sorts of answers across the spectrum. [00:04:00] But if you ask a different question, such as movie theater, Minneapolis, Minnesota. You’re going to get way more specific answers, or movies that are out right now, way more specific answers.

So she likes to say, your mind is connected not to the internet, but the infinite. And you can ask any question and get answers depending on how specific and the quality of the questions that you ask. So Mary would always use that example about going to the South of France and generating 10, 000 just as a teaching point when she was teaching coaches and clients how to ask more powerful questions in their life and in their business.

And, the crazy thing that happened is one day she’s traveling, she’s invited to speak on a cruise and she’s sitting with her husband in the South of France. And she’s like, Holy smokes for probably a year. I’ve been using that example every single time. And where are we sitting right now? The South of France.

And what am I doing? I’m getting paid. 000 to speak on this cruise. And it occurred to her, not only is it the power of the questions you ask, but when you’re tuning your mind to that vibration over and over and over again, [00:05:00] there oftentimes isn’t much you have to do to start to create those manifested results based on the thoughts you’re thinking and the questions you’re asking.

So I really wanted to start by sharing with all of you the power of the questions that we ask. Whether it’s, hey, can I get a refund for this free ticket? Or, what can I do to travel to the south of France and get paid 10, 000 to do it? So the quality of your question is going to determine the quality of the outcome, which is therefore going to be the quality of your life.

So I want to give you 10 coaching questions that you can ask your clients today, no matter what kind of coaching you’re doing. And as I mentioned earlier, if you’re not yet a certified coach, or you’re thinking about becoming a coach, I really want you to put the hat on of seeing if this feels expansive to you.

If it resonates with you, if it feels life giving to you, because if it does, when you’re seeing, Oh, this could really work for people. And I could really help people. And that’s probably a sign that you should be taking some steps toward becoming the coach that you’ve been dreaming of becoming. So, at Brave Thinking Institute, and when I’m as the director of coach certification, we train our coaches in a [00:06:00] very specific coaching skillset.

We call it the Brave Thinking coaching skillset. You might call it evocative coaching. In other words, we don’t tell our clients what action to take to change their life. We help them discover the skill set so that anytime they want to take an action to change their life from now on, they don’t have to ask me.

They can do that because they know the tools. So let me back that up. Cause I know for some of you, you can be like, Oh, but I would want a coach to tell me so I can just make changes. And so I really, really want to break this down. There are universal laws that govern this universe. There’s one that you’re living with right now.

You’re using it. You might not even know you’re using it, but it’s the law of gravity. You’re not floating off into space. You are sitting in a chair because there’s something called gravity, which keeps us connected to the mass of planet Earth. That is an invisible law. You can’t miss it. I mean, you can see it that you’re not floating off, but You don’t have to know every way it operates or why it operates to be experiencing it in your life right this very second.

Okay, you’re operating under another law if you’re using a computer that’s plugged in, or if you’re sitting in a room with [00:07:00] lights on. You’re using the law of electricity. You might not know how your house is wired, but you can see that when you turn the light switch on, the light goes on. And it’s not biased.

Here’s the great thing about the laws of the universe. It’s not like, oh, if you’re white, Then you have the law of gravity, but if you’re black, you know, or if you’re Muslim, you have the law of electricity, but if you’re Catholic, you don’t. It’s not biased. It’s not biased by race, by where you live in the world, by gender, by religious, by ethnicity.

It’s not biased at all. The laws of the universe work. Now, everything in this universe is precise, including human results, human results, the ability for a human to have a goal and get that result or have a dream and get that result. It actually also operates by universal law, like everything in this universe does.

The challenge is, many of us were trained to believe that human results are a crapshoot, or people just get lucky, or they’re in the right place at the right time, but actually if you look at every person who’s created that full spectrum success, that they love their life in all these different areas, you will see a through line [00:08:00] of how they operated within this universe to create that result they’re enjoying.

So as we go into these 10 questions, that is why we at Brave Thinking Institute and I, when I was doing my coaching business and why I’m suggesting this to you today, highly recommend that when you’re training your clients, that you get well versed enough, whether you take a coaching certification or study universal laws.

Because you don’t want the client to just have a one time result. You want the client to understand how a success works so that they can duplicate it over time. So here’s the thing about being more of a directive coach. The client comes to you and says, I’m trying to decide if I should sell my house and you take them through, like, let’s say a pro and con list, or you’re like, let’s look at the interest rates, this and that.

Well, that doesn’t seem like a good financial idea. Let’s say you’re a financial coach or even a realtor. That answer is so not satisfying because if the person is in love with selling the house, then forget the common means of which you do it. Let’s get creative. and discover steps that we can take to get them the result that [00:09:00] they want, as opposed to looking outside to condition or circumstance or practical means to get a result.

And that’s why I way beyond a directive coaching model, believe in more of an evocative coaching model where we caught the brave thinking coaching model, where we actually help our clients discover ways In which this universe operates. And by the way, it’s not by interest rates and conditions and what the economy is doing so that they can replicate success every time.

Now, this is a topic that when we do our coach certification, we have, I think there’s something like 46 video lessons that our coaches go through plus a live coaching skills practicum in order to be able to coach in this way. So I don’t want to give any sort of a false impression that you’re going to hear this podcast episode, and you’re going to just be a certified coach after hearing this podcast episode.

Okay. Not what’s happening here. However, if you’re brand new and you haven’t coached before, this will give you an idea if this style and this model of coaching is right for you. If you’re already a coach, but more directive in nature, I invite you to just try this on and see if it fits, get curious about it, do an experiment.

[00:10:00] Would this support your clients and having even faster growth. And then for those of you who are already evocative coaches or even brave thinking Institute coaches or more spiritual coaches, add this to your repertoire, turn up the volume on it. But the one piece of this model that we’re going to talk about today is the power of asking questions, because I want to be, as I’m leaning into helping my clients understand how success occurs based on universal law, me being able to ask them questions that help them discover themselves and what they really want is at the center stream of this.

So I’m going to give you 10 questions. I’m just going to say though, when in doubt, the question begins with the word, what, if as a coach, you’re ever in doubt, formulate your question that starts with the word, what? Okay. So let’s say your client comes to you with a problem. You know, my mother is such a pain in the butt and you know, she was supposed to, I don’t know.

Help me clean my house. And then she was criticizing the cleaning products I had, you know, whatever it is, I’m just making this up. Or, you know, I’ve got this employee who blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is the problem that the [00:11:00] client comes to their coaching session with. So, as a coach, no matter what modality you’re using, you want to move the client from the problem to the solution.

They don’t have to know what the solution is, but they want to be able to feel what it would look like if it were all going well, so that they can make decisions not based on the problem, based on the ideal outcome, because if your client’s making decisions based on problems, then that is usually going to get more problems because it usually comes from a constrictive nervous system activated place.

So the coaching move here, this client’s telling me that I’m like, okay, I hear you. I hear you. That that’s very, whatever they’re saying, frustrating, irritating, confusing. So now let’s put that to the side for a moment and I want to ask you this question. What would it look like if it were working?

Powerful coaching question there. What would it look like if it were working? Think about the last time you personally coached how to challenge. You probably didn’t ask yourself, what would it look like if it were working? You probably got yourself trying to figure it out, solve the problem. And now I’m [00:12:00] still operating at the level of problem.

So this is a mind blowing question because most of your clients will say they don’t know. They don’t know what it would look like if it were working. So if you could just wave a magic wand and this all worked out with your mother and the cleaning products, what would that look like? If this all worked out with your employee and they were doing exactly what you would love and they were feeling good and you were feeling good, what would that look like?

Because now I can go in and start to create some, help the client create a step they can take or a conversation they can have that matches the ideal outcome as opposed to the problem. Because problem is going to beget problem. Okay, so that’s powerful coaching question number one. Okay, second question.

Let’s say a client comes to a call with you and it could be in a group setting too. It could be in an audience of 5, 000 people and they’re going to get some coaching from you and they are feeling resistant to trying something new. They’re not a hundred percent open to coaching. And here’s what may surprise you.

A lot of times people will pay you and you’ll think they paid me, Lauren. Of course they’re open to coaching. That doesn’t mean in the moment when the problem feels really heavy and they feel like they’ve tried [00:13:00] everything, that there’s not going to be some resistance that comes up. So the second question that is a very powerful coaching question is when you’re noticing resistance in someone, or maybe this is a tough one.

It’s a really tough problem that just feels really challenging and you want to come in with a respectful way of inviting them into taking some action. Whatever the scenario is, there’s resistance or it just feels really hard to them. A great coaching question is, would you be willing to do an experiment?

Here’s why I love this. A lot of times when we’re coaching, it doesn’t matter what kind of coaching we’re doing. We might give a suggestion to the client or a tool they can use or something that they may want to apply in the situation. Um, the client is. often going to feel resistant because we’re asking them to change pattern.

And of course, the internal operating system, the self limiting belief is going to pop up giant in that moment and object. And so if you notice any of that resistance energy, if you say to the client, are you willing to do an experiment with me? The power of the word experiment and the energetics that are [00:14:00] encoded within that word.

is that it’s not permanent and we’re not promising that it’s going to work and we’re not marrying it. We’re not having to use it to ever. We’re just doing a simple experiment. And that often brings the client’s nervous system reaction down to a point where they can be receptive to the tool that you’re giving them or what you’re coaching them with because now they have The ability to say, Oh, an experiment is just something you try out.

You don’t do it forever and it might work and it might not. And that will help them feel more comfortable trying things on that you’re giving them. All right. Awesome. One of the things that I’ve learned for question number three is not a question, but it had to go in here because sometimes a client will be describing to you a problem or a self limiting belief, and it won’t be a hundred percent clear to you.

Sometimes. Not often, but sometimes a client will be complaining to you about something going on with their coaching. Like, I really wish my coaching was a different time, or I’m not getting the results I want, or whatever it is that every, every once in a while comes up. But more often than not, it’s going to be, they’re describing something to you and you’re [00:15:00] not really understanding what question they’re asking.

Or even like, even you’ve heard them describe it, but you’re still unsure. Like, I’m not following what they’re saying. The number one thing you can say as a coach. Is these three words, tell me more, tell me more, because the more that you understand about the energetics of what they’re going through, sometimes you get it in a second, you hear, Oh, I’m having some imposter syndrome and I’ve got this thing scheduled, but I’m feeling like I don’t want to show up.

That’s pretty obvious, but sometimes they’ll tell you the whole background story and what their husband did and their sister in law did and this and this and that, and you’re trying to just discern. What’s the question? What’s the real issue? How can I help them? So. saying those three words, tell me more about that.

That is really, really going to help you as a coach to make sure that you don’t just jump in and start coaching when you’re not even a hundred percent sure if that’s what they’re asking for coaching on. All right. So that leads me to the next question, which is question number four of [00:16:00] the 10 powerful coaching questions for life changing client results.

Question number four is how do you experience that? How do you experience that? So if a client comes to a coaching call and we get to a laser coaching part of the call, and they say to me, you know, I’m feeling pretty stuck. And then they kind of tell me about different things. I want to know how do they experience, so I’m saying, how do you experience that?

Does that mean you take no action? Does that mean you’re taking action and it’s not working? Does that mean what does stuck mean to you? And I know that that sounds like going overboard with question asking. But the thing that I have learned over the years is that words are very subjective to the person in their experience.

So if I know what I feel like when I’m stuck, but that might not be how they experience it. I really want to give spot on laser coaching to that person. When I say laser, it’s a laser focus to them and who they are and what they’re looking to achieve. Then I want to know for [00:17:00] sure how they experienced that, especially if the background story that they tell me or any additional information they tell me doesn’t really match what they’re saying is stuck in my mind.

Then I want to feel how they experience it. I’m, they might say something like, I just, I’m not supported at all. I get no support. I feel this, I feel that. Well, how do, how do you experience that? And the thing that blows my mind is oftentimes it’s totally different than how I experience it. Like literally I’ll be speaking.

Sometimes this is even masterminding with a colleague and they’ll tell me a paradigm they’re having or like self limiting belief, so to speak. And I’ll be like, wow, I’ve literally never experienced it that way. And that’s why we want to ask, how do you experience that? Because when I see how the client’s experiencing it, I have more information.

I know if it’s triggering their nervous system. I know, I just know so much more so I can give them the appropriate coaching. And this is true for business coaching as well. This is true for real estate coaching. This is true for health coaching. We really want to get inside the client’s mind and psyche and see how they’re experiencing what they’re experiencing so we can [00:18:00] most help them.

Lauren Brollier Newton: Okay. Question number five. If you could wave a magic wand, what would the result be? If you could wave a magic wand, what would the result be? Sometimes a client has been trained to think they should want something, or they should set a goal, or this is what they should do, or this is how to create what they want.

And, but it’s not an alignment for them and it’s not exciting to them. So if I say if you could wave a magic wand, what would the result be in your life? Oftentimes it’s different than the goal or the question they’re asking. It’s different than anything that they’ve shared with me because they didn’t give themselves permission to have the magic wand.

All they give themselves permission for is the limited thinking. So that’s really powerful and actually getting to know what your client wants and why does that matter when they [00:19:00] know what they want? It’s so much more motivating that it’ll get them out of bed. It’ll help them take action. All right.

Question number six, you’ll see some of these are similar. Client is going through a struggle. Something in their life is not to their satisfaction. It’s good that they’re noticing their discontent because that’s the life signal. It’s time to change. It’s time for growth. So I’m going to ask them. So what would you love to see happen here in this scenario that you’ve just pointed out to me?

What would you love to see happen here? And it’s very similar to the question we asked earlier. What would it look like if it were working? Helping the client know what they actually want above the noise, above what society is telling them above what they think they should do is it’s emancipation. It’s freeing.

So freeing. All right. I love this one. This one is a great one to use when your client is saying something like, let’s say you’ve got a real estate agent client. I like to use the real estate example a lot. You’ll notice this throughout my podcast, because I often in my own coaching business served real estate agents.

I didn’t know anything about real estate. Really? This is the powerful thing about the evocative coaching model or the brave thinking [00:20:00] coaching model. But let’s say you’ve got a real estate agent who’s telling you that the reason that they’re not successful is because the interest rates are so high. Or you’ve got a mom who’s telling you that she can’t live her dream because she has a little one at home.

Or a woman or man that’s telling you they can’t find love because there’s no good people after 50 without baggage. So you just see that they’re generalizing. They’re stuck in some idea. If the economy’s this, then I’m this. If I’m a mom, I can’t do this. I’m dating, but everybody’s, I’m 50, people over 50 have baggage.

And it’s just a period at the end of the sentence. And you can see that that’s getting in their way. The question you could ask them is this, in an infinite universe, with infinite possibilities and the power breathing you. So first of all, it’s universe is infinite. There’s no beginning or end that anybody can find, not even in science.

There’s infinite possibilities. We know from physics that everything is just sitting in superposition. All possibilities are on the table and the power breathing you, whether that your client defines that as God, spirit, life, waves, and particles, that [00:21:00] there is this system that’s bigger than the client.

Breathing them to life right now. They can’t take one breath on their own. If there’s not life in their body, they can’t force breath. They can’t force aliveness with all those things in an infinite universe with infinite possibilities and the power breathing you, could you believe that fill in the blank?

So for the person who thinks there’s no good people after 50, because they all have baggage. I might say, could you believe in an infinite universe with infinite possibilities on a planet with 8 billion people? And the power breathing you with all of that combined. Could you believe there’s one in 8 billion that doesn’t have baggage?

So I’m opening up the client’s mind to see how limited their thinking is, how actually untrue their thinking is. If it’s someone that’s a mom and she feels like she can’t live her dream because she’s a mom. Could you believe in an infinite universe with infinite possibilities and the power breathing you?

That even with being a loving, dedicated, there for your kid mom, you could take a step towards your dream. And it’s just a question that [00:22:00] opens up possibility, opens up potential for your client. All right. Next one is an action oriented one. Your client has a dream, has a goal, and you can see as their coach, there’s a lack of action taking on their part.

Or maybe they’ve been taking a lot of action, but we want to keep the momentum going and continue to action that matches the dream or the goal or the vision that they have. Great coaching question. What is one step you could take in the next 24 hours to move you in the direction of your vision, your dream, your goal, and let the client brainstorm a ton of ideas so they can see one.

There’s always ideas. Henry Ford said, when you think you’ve, I think it was Henry Ford, maybe not, but I’m just going to attribute it to him because that’s who’s coming to my mind. When you think you’ve tried everything. You haven’t. So if the client’s in the think they’ve tried everything stage, this is a great question to ask.

If the client is in the, you know, they need to take more action and faster to produce results. That’s a great question to ask. What’s one step you could take in the next 24 hours to move you in the direction of your vision. And this is going to help them generate some ideas that they can take right now to move them [00:23:00] forward.

All right. Let’s say you have a client and you just see that they are throwing themselves a pity party. And like they are just stuck in some negativity or they’re just going in circles or you’ve had a lot of sessions and you can see that there’s this through line of something that’s really getting in their way.

If you’re going to give your opinion about something that you see a client doing, you’re going to ask an invitational question first, because. Even though they’re paying you for coaching, nobody likes unsolicited out of left field advice. That has been my experience saying you need to do this. You have to do this or just telling them what to do out of the blue is not helpful.

So if I’m noticing a pattern with a client, they’re in a pity party mood or they for weeks, I’ve noticed them not take action or whatever it is. I’m going to say to them this question, question number nine, can I have permission to be rigorous with you? Okay. In other words, I’m about to give you a coaching ass kicking, but I want to make sure you’re ready for it before I just throw that on you.

Okay. So I’m [00:24:00] inviting the client to be receptive to coaching. And if they say no, that I don’t have permission to be rigorous with them, then that’s a different conversation. But before I start giving them that, you know, spiritual ass kicking, so to speak, I’m going to say to them, can I have permission to be rigorous with you?

I once had a client say no to that. And it was a pattern with her. And I never invited her to coach with me again. I just didn’t ask her to renew her coaching. I don’t want to work with someone who’s not willing to be coached. I think that particular client liked being around transformation. She liked the idea of it, but she wasn’t really ready to do something with it.

And that is completely okay. That’s why I asked the question, but you can make decisions as a coach of what you want to do from there. 99. 999 percent of the time, the client is going to say, yes, please be rigorous with me. Alright, final question, and this is really important for those of you who coach, you’re not a life coach, but you’re coaching a specific modality like health coaching, fitness coaching, business coaching, that kind of thing.

Here’s the question. It’s three years from now, everything has worked out, you’ve waved a magic wand, what would you love? [00:25:00] I have a health coach friend and client who was so afraid to do this kind of questioning with her clients because she said, they’re coming to me for their gut health. They’re really coming to me for medical things.

They don’t want a vision, but I convinced her because she was asking for my help. That if they have a vision, there’s a reason why they’re doing the thing they’re doing. If they’re going to transform their gut health and they’re going to have to eat different things and take supplements and exercise and do all these things, they’re going to want to have a deep down reason for that.

And that’s where the vision comes in. It’s three years from now. Your health is amazing. What would you love? What does it look like? And that gives them something to get them out of bed in the morning. So I just went through a hell of a lot of stuff here. 10 powerful coaching questions you can use with your clients right now.

You don’t have to use all 10. There’s probably one that stood out to you and you went, wow, I could really implement that in my coaching practice right now. Maybe if you’re new and you’re thinking of becoming a coach, the, the invitational nature of these questions feels very powerful to you or asking yourself, the question [00:26:00] became powerful.

In that case, life coaching is probably a great thing for you. I want to say one more thing about this, because I think I might’ve scared you a little bit. When clients are coming to you with the problems that they’re having or the issues that they’re having. I don’t want you to ever think life coaching is therapy.

It’s not therapy. We’re not doing therapeutic processing. We’re not sitting there and listening to the client’s problems all day, but they are going to bring you things that are in the way of them achieving their goals or achieving their vision or transforming their life or feeling more confident. And so when they bring those up, these questions come in, but that’s not what the whole session is.

Not at least in the way we train coaches. This is a part of the session. Okay. Where you can say, is there anything coming up for you that feels challenging? Or you’ve gone over some curriculum with them and things are coming up. That’s when you would ask these questions. But I don’t want you to feel like your clients are just going to get on the phone and complain.

That’s not what coaching is. There’s way more structure to it, but when they are facing a challenge, these are the questions you’re going to be asking. So you are amazing. I’m so [00:27:00] happy to be here with you. I’m so happy to get to be your hosting guide. And I’ll for sure. See you in the next episode. Love y’all.